Mr & Mrs Smith: Donald Glover recounts his “divorce” with Phoebe Waller-Bridge

The Fleabag star was set to be the co-star and co-creator of the Prime Video series. But after 7 months of working together, they decided to stop their collaboration. “This series couldn’t have two captains,” Glover sums up today.

If Maya Erskine responds to Donald Glover in the new Prime Video series, Mr. & Mrs. Smithit must be remembered that initially, it is Phoebe Waller-Bridge who was to be the female star of the show, which she was also to co-write.

Only here, in 2021, the creator of Fleabag abandoned the project after 7 months of development. An amicable separation linked to creative differences, which Donald Glover compared to a “divorce” in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

“You say to yourself: shit, it should have worked! And to be honest, in my opinion, a good relationship is one where we don’t refuse the extremely uncomfortable. But, I don’t know if we would have been able to to say things to each other brutally, both of them…”

In any case, their bad creative understanding “could just be cultural“, adds Glover, who explains that “Fleabag was written entirely by her. They don’t have a pool of writers in the UK. And for example on Atlanta, we had built a culture where me and the other writers could say mean things to each other. We said things to each other when we thought it was stupid. And then we laughed about it. We weren’t afraid to say something, but we also had the possibility of getting screwed. With Phoebe, I don’t think we never felt comfortable enough with each other. It doesn’t matter. That’s what happens when you’re two captains. That’s how I want to run my ship and the other wants it lead in another way. This series could not see two captains.”

Concretely, Donald Glover tells that Phoebe Waller–Bridge rewrote the driver:

“I read his script and I said to myself, ‘That’s definitely not my style.’

The former of Community finally insists: “It’s like a real divorce. The hardest part is knowing when to say it’s over. Like, when are you stopping the fees? Because we want to act like, this is cool, when in reality, we both put a lot of work into it. So who will look after the cat? I brought Francesca Sloane, and also, I have the impression that Phoebe wasn’t completely in love with this thing. I think if this series had been more like her and she had insisted, I would have said: “You should have it, I’ll let you have it.”

But Phoebe Waller–Bridge ended up leaving the cat Donald Glover and everyone went back to make their own life.